--It seems that the college administration thinks that the best way to protect yourself is to have somebody walk around with you all of the time. Gee, that way, both of you can get killed. Heaven forbid that we should be teaching young adults to take responsibilty for their own safety and the peace of the community.

"Should we treat the Second Amendment like the rest of the Bill of Rights and assume it protects Americans against an over-intrusive government, as the Bush administration now argues? While the question whether people have a right to protect their own lives and the lives of loved ones is important, for most the bottom line is simpler: Do gun laws reduce violent crime?"

"The Washington Post reports (May 3, p.A1) that 20,000 pilots want permission to carry guns in the cockpit to protect themselves from hijackers. Not a good idea, says D.C. congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton: a gun in the cockpit could harm innocent bystanders. After all, Norton explains, "We know guns in the homes are more likely to be used for killing relatives and for suicide."

"It's a little unusual for footnotes in U.S. Justice Department briefs to land on the front page of The New York Times. Yet that happened this week as The Times heralded a historic "shift" in Justice Department policy concerning the language of the Second Amendment and specifically whether it confirms an individual right to own and bear arms."

"The footnote, filed in connection with two separate gun cases, says in part, "The current position of the United States."

"A bill to grant gun manufacturers and sellers broad protection from lawsuits, including a spate of suits aimed at holding them responsible for gun violence, easily passed a House panel on Thursday."

"Florida Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns and other sponsors of the legislation said it would stop "frivolous" and politically motivated lawsuits aimed at driving gun makers into bankruptcy. It passed a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on a voice vote, with only a few Democrats dissenting."

"Justice Department lawyers said in the legal briefs that the ban on automatic weapons and the domestic-protection prohibition are reasonable restrictions on the right to bear arms. But if the court accepts their interpretation of the Second Amendment as giving individuals the right to bear arms, the reasonableness of every law on the books that restricts gun ownership would be subject to challenge."

"The National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Violence Policy Center are opposed to smart gun technology, but for two very different reasons, Wired reported April 30." [See: NRA: Smart Guns Are Plain Stupid]

"The Violence Policy Center is against smart-gun technology because gunmakers could use it to sell more weapons."

"The National Rifle Association loves tough-talking spin. It wants you to think -- and the nation's political class apparently does -- that it's all-powerful and that politicians oppose it at their peril," says the op-ad, which also appears online at www.TomPaine.com.

"Six months after preventing a road rage incident from escalating, what appears to be a politically motivated felony gun charge has been filed."

"Son of former Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack, also Richard, has been charged with a felony for brandishing a firearm in November 2001, even though he prevented an act of violence and defended himself against an attacker."

"The Bush Administration has told the US Supreme Court for the first time that it believes the Constitution protects an individual's right to possess firearms, reversing the government's longstanding interpretation of the Second Amendment."

"Stepping now into that fray is Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department. It has decided the Second Amendment, "broadly protects the rights of "individuals" to own firearms. It gave that interpretation in two briefs filed before the Supreme Court Tuesday. However, this move appears to be political grandstanding and little else. The high court hasn't spoken on the issue since 1939, and it held then that the right applies only in the formation of a well-regulated militias." -- Charles E. Richardson, The Macon Telegraph

"Someone was sneaking through the woods next to a local gun club, poking a handheld camcorder through a wooden fence and filming pigeons used as target practice."

"The Fund for Animals, which sent the video footage to Bensalem officials, claims it was filmed March 23. The tape clearly shows a man firing repeated rounds into pigeons as they try to escape from traps. Some get away. Some don't."

"Kanawha County Sheriff Dave Tucker has used thousands of dollars from the county's pistol permit fund since January 2000 to buy jackets, develop pictures and to construct the county's shooting range at Camp Virgil Tate, sheriff's records show."

"A register from Tucker's "Gun Fund" from January 2000 to March 13 of this year shows the sheriff has authorized more than $3,000 for pictures and enlargements at several local photography stores and frame shops."

"Both sides in the long battle over the constitutional right to gun ownership fretted yesterday about how a new government policy disclosed in passing will play out in the courts."

"Solicitor General Theodore Olson's typewritten footnotes in responses to two so-called "pauper appeals" abandon the government's militia-only view of gun ownership and say the Second Amendment provides individuals with the right to own guns."

"By adopting the view that the Constitution confers an individual right on each American to own a gun, the Justice Department has put the government's imprimatur on a reading of the Second Amendment that enjoyed little support from courts or legal commentators until relatively recently, legal analysts said yesterday."

"Gun control advocates, led by Sen. Charles Schumer, yesterday said the Bush administration's move to bolster the rights of gun owners under the Second Amendment to the Constitution could make it harder to enforce firearm laws" and it "runs counter to Attorney General John Ashcroft's sworn testimony at his confirmation hearing last year and could have an adverse impact on federal and state gun regulations."

"Capitol hill staffers, who bear the brunt of the phone calls, reported to RMGO staff that their phones rang of the hook with RMGO activists who wanted to defeat HB1410's poor concealed carry language and come back next year with a much better bill. Those phone calls solidified the opposition of Senate conservatives against the issue, and may just have sent the message to legislative moderates that conservatives won't vote for any bill just because it has "concealed carry" in the title."

These folks need to be set straight on the *real* intent of the Second Amendment, and on the *real* militia. From this excerpt, it's obvious that they don't have a clue:

"The time is ripe, as is said in legal parlance, for the high court to weigh in again on the Second Amendment and, it can be hoped, reaffirm the position that the Constitution guarantees only a collective right to guns through state and federal militias, not an individual's absolute right." -- SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

"Let's see. What America needs is more guns in the hands of more people, right? That would almost certainly be the result of a new and potentially tragic initiative by John Ashcroft's Justice Department."

"In a reversal of federal policy that has stood for more than 60 years, the department told the Supreme Court this week that individual Americans have a constitutional right to own guns." -- BOB HERBERT, The NY Times

"Nothing has been done to protect passengers and flight attendants in the cabin, and that's where any threat would come from -- the cabin. To just think that everything is safe on a plane if you give pilots guns is ridiculous," said union spokesman Jeff Zack.

"John Michael Snyder, public affairs director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, this morning announced all-out support for a bill to repeal the law virtually banning handguns in the District of Columbia."

"The Justice Department's enlightened interpretation of the Second Amendment as an individual right was hailed today by the firearms civil rights organization that has supported a key Texas case that led to a federal appeals court ruling upholding the individual rights concept."

"The US justice department has told the supreme court that gun ownership is guaranteed by the constitution, overturning the official government position of the past 60 years. Legal experts say the statement could result in US gun laws falling apart."

"A triumph for the gun lobby, the view was stated in footnotes to two unsolicited briefs sent to the supreme court on Monday night giving opinions in gun-ownership cases."

KABA NOTE: Nobody "restored" our RIGHT. They have merely come closer to acknowledging it as fact.

"Pro-freedom activists in Arizona have been in an ongoing battle with the Arizona Department of Revenue. This disagreement stems from the fact that the AZ DoR is not in compliance with state law by making firearm owners disarm before entering the building and not providing secure lock boxes for this purpose, as required by state law. The following is a report from an Arizona Libertarian activist who went to the AZ DoR with the intent of possibly being arrested by demanding his rights. It is this sort of activism that will eventually turn the tide against the anti-rights bigots in government."

"An off-duty federal drug enforcement agent was indicted by a grand jury Monday on murder and firearm charges in the slaying of a Roanoke... Timothy Glenn Workman, 31, of McAllen, Texas, had previously declined a preliminary hearing in the Feb. 12 death of 41-year-old Keith Edward Bailey."

"According to a search warrant filed in the case, police arrested the apparently intoxicated Workman after he told an officer that he shot Bailey."

"By arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that the 2nd Amendment broadly protects a person's right to own a gun, the Bush administration has set a political agenda, but one that ultimately could have little impact on federal gun laws," legal experts said.

"Residents at the second session of the annual town meeting Tuesday narrowly rejected an amendment to further limit hunting and the discharge of firearms on residential property."

"The vote which would have amended the town bylaw to prohibit hunting and the discharge of firearms on residential property which is less than 15 acres in size was rejected by a vote of 84 against, 76 in favor."

Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. — Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

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